Sephardic Chief Rabbi Appeals to France to Spare Nakash

Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu has asked the French Council of Bishops to intervene on behalf of William Nakash, whose extradition to France to serve a life sentence for murder was ordered by the Justice Ministry last week.

The appeal by Eliahu, reported here Thursday, was on humanitarian grounds to keep the Nakash family intact. His wife is pregnant. The Rabbinical Court has already ordered that Nakash, an Algerian-born Orthodox Jew, must remain in the country. Otherwise his wife would become an “aguna” — abandoned woman — unable to remarry under religious law. The Rabbinical Court order conflicts with the Supreme Court, which rejected Nakash’s final appeal against extradition. Attorney General Yosef Harish called on the Justice Minister to implement the extradition order immediately.